Great Neck Park District unveils shuttle-share service pilot program

Buzz will be offering a shuttle-share service for Manhattan commuters. The deadline to sign up for the first week is Jan. 11 at 9 p.m. (Photo courtesy of Buzz)

It’s the buzz of the town – literally.

The Great Neck Park District, Transdev – which operates the NICE bus system – and Buzz, a shuttle service for commuters, announced the launch of a pilot program on Thursday, in hopes of easing stress on parking lots and reducing reliance on cars in the Great Neck area.

Buzz will connect mostly with express trains during the weekdays. (Photo courtesy of Buzz)

“It’s going to be less expensive than the daily parking fee and it’s going to be technology heavy, so it all can be done on a smartphone,” Great Neck Park District Commissioner Bob Lincoln said. “It’s not exactly ride share and not exactly Uber – it’s something in between.”

Buzz is a subscription-based shuttle service with pickups and dropoffs planned in advance, according to its website, “but built around subscriber locations and preferences.” Commuters then pool together into 14-person vans for transit.

In the case of Great Neck, it will target areas with high concentrations of commuter parking lot users and take them to and from the train station in Great Neck Plaza starting Jan. 14, according to Lincoln.

Buzz’s website says their operations schedule will be based on morning departures from Great Neck and afternoon departures from Penn Station.

Buzz’s service area will include roads between Franklin Road and Rogers Road and Grace Avenue. (Photo courtesy of Buzz)

The current service area includes an area sandwiched between Middle Neck Road and East Shore Road, with its northernmost point at Franklin and Rogers roads and southernmost point at Grace Avenue – just north of the train station.

State Assemblyman Anthony D’Urso, who represents the North Shore and attended the Jan. 10 unveiling, said he believes the service will help alleviate congestion in the area.

“This is an excellent way to commute to the train station and to reduce traffic during rush hour,” D’Urso said.

Lincoln said the program will be free for the first month and aiming for signing up “maybe a dozen people to sign up this first week.” It will then likely amount to about two dollars each way, he said.

“If this is successful, I would suspect that it would be expanded,” Lincoln said. “It’s not intended to be for everybody – it’s intended to be where there are clusters of people that use the parking lots.”

Lincoln recommended that anyone with interest in the program visit greatneckbuzz.com.

Janelle Clausen is a reporter with Blank Slate Media covering the Great Neck peninsula and Town of North Hempstead. She previously freelanced for the Amityville Record, Massapequa Post and the Babylon Beacon. When not reporting, the south shore native can usually be found buried in a book, playing video games or talking Star Wars.

POPULAR CATEGORY

Blank Slate Media is the publisher of 6 award-winning weekly newspapers on the North Shore of Nassau County, Long Island, and The Island Now, it's news website.
The company has partnered with the five weekly newspapers operated by Litmor Publications to offer provide an advertising with a circulation of 38,938 and a readers of more than 116,000.